Soviet Foreign Economic Policy Under Perestroika
A generally upbeat assessment of the Gorbachev regime's declared intentions and actual accomplishments-which are much less-in bringing the Soviet Union into the international economy. Geron recognizes formidable obstacles and knows that reforming foreign economic relations depends on the success of domestic reform, but he sees the direction of change as irreversible. In relatively few pages he packs much information and includes some useful tables.
Related
The jailing of Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has revealed the fault lines running through the post-Soviet political economy. The reforms and privatization of the 1990s were so flawed and unfair as to make them unstable. A backlash was inevitable. Given Vladimir Putin's authoritarian tendencies, that backlash has proved equally flawed and unfair-and perhaps equally unstable.
Analysis of the 'Shatalin plan' to introduce a market economy within 500 days.
Most people think that Russia's economic problems are due to the shock of fast and radical reforms. Actually, the Russian economy is not very liberalized at all, and its problems have been caused by reforms that were too slow and partial, not too sweeping. Russia suffers not from too free a market but from corruption, which thrives by preying on an unwieldy bureaucracy. Still, the outlook for the months ahead is promising. If Poland could do it, why can't Russia? The private sector got a salutary wake-up call from the 1998 collapse of the ruble, and the strength of the political center bodes well for economic recovery and social change.
